The White Sox probable lineup comes very close to the optimum lineup, just 0.5 behind. One reason is that Guillen puts Pierre, Beckham and Quentin consecutively in the lineup. The LAT slots them 9-1-2 instead of 1-2-3, but keeping those three together helps get the most out of the order.

The lineup used now is ‘Pierre, Beckham, Quentin, Konerko, Rios, Pierzynski, Ramirez, Teahen and Kotsay.’ When I used the LAT back in February 1, the projected lineup was ‘Pierre, Rios, Quentin, Konerko, Teahen, Beckham, Pierzynski, Ramirez and Kotsay,’ and the results were:

Best lineup: 4.89 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.81 runs per game
Worst lineup: 4.67 runs per game

Seems the current lineup projection is closer to the optimal run production!